Positively Medieval
by Lizcs
Summary: It is known that purebloods are pretty inbred due to their high levels of pride, prejudice, and few numbers of acceptable families. Naturally this leads to a lack in viable pregnancies and healthy offspring. Pureblood customs are also pretty stuck in the past, allowing for some pretty medieval practices as well. Narcissa finds out the hard way. Very short one-shot brainstorm idea.


I guess we're supposed to do disclaimers about not owning Harry Potter and Co. Just borrowing the characters for my story material.

RR please. I like the feedback. Critical or otherwise.

I am aware I have like two stories on hiatus. _Anything But Ordinary_ is probably the only one I'll be working on in the foreseeable future. The next chapter has moved from a year-ish of brainstorming to I should probably start actually putting words to paper and get the story flowing. So hopefully you'll have something coming soon.

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 **Positively Medieval**

Initially, looking at her baby boy, Narcissa had just been so happy that he was just there, alive, in her arms, crying and pink. And as he calmed and fell asleep to her soft rocking, the beat of her heart, the rise and fall of her chest, she was grateful for her own fair features being reflected in him. She didn't think she'd ever been so fortunate to have inherited her mother's pale features as she was in that moment, looking at her son's almost translucent hair and pale skin.

She loved her husband, truly. But for five years they had tried and failed to succeed in begetting an heir. And Abraxas hadn't much approved their match to begin with, considering Bellatrix's apparent infertility and Andromeda's defection. So, he included a clause in the marriage contract stating that if after five years no heir had been successfully conceived and born alive, Narcissa would be shamefully returned to her House of origin, the House of Black, and the marriage annulled.

Needless to say, there were reasons why the Blacks had not been too keen on their marriage either.

And after year four and miscarriage number three, Narcissa had been frantic with worry. So, while still weak and mourning, she had gone home to her mother, in need of familial comfort and advice. The advice given gave very little comfort and was as medieval as Abraxas' clause.

Find Sirius, think of England, and hope for the best.

Well, after much internal strife, find Sirius she did. Convincing him to do what she needed was easier than she thought it'd be, but when she considered the amount of alcohol he'd drunk and her disguise, she supposed it wasn't all that surprising. Think of England she tried but found difficult for a multitude of reasons: Guilt for betraying her husband, surprise for having never realized how handsome her wayward cousin was, and disgust at herself for such thoughts and subsequent actions, just to name a few. But hope for the best she had, and fortunately the fates had smiled upon her.

People would forever say he was the spitting image of his father. But once the bluish baby color had faded from his eyes to turn them slate grey instead of pale, only Narcissa and her mother would truly know just how accurate and inaccurate those mutterings would be. Not even the wards of the Malfoy's ancestral home could detect the difference, thanks to an oversite in the marriage bond's magic essentially making Narcissa a true Malfoy, traditionally done for the exact reasons Narcissa had employed. In the case that a Malfoy Head of House or heir cannot conceive, his spouse may try with a chosen substitute. And choose she had.

And Draco was perfect.

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Author's Note:

The idea would have been that if for whatever reason the paternity of the child was doubted and discovered not to be Lucius, Narcissa would be returned to the House of Black shamefully anyways. Keeping it in the family just assured less of a chance of it being discovered and similar genes (genetically speaking if Narcissa and Lucius had a child with dark coloring it wouldn't be too unheard of considering Narcissa is a Black who are notorious for their dark coloring (Sirius, Regulus, both of her sisters as well as her father and both Walburga and Orion) but I can 99% see the Malfoy's having some kind of magic ingrained in them that insures their pale genetics being dominant, maybe that's what that marriage bond does…). But rather than be returned soiled and ruined and empty-handed, further dishonoring the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, she would at least come home baring a potential Black heir.

It wouldn't be too crazy to think Narcissa and Sirius' child would be pretty eagerly welcomed into House Black by Walburga. Regulus had gone missing/died, her husband had recently died, Sirius was estranged, and Walburga herself had been a Black before her marriage to her cousin Orion. Draco would be the perfect pureblood grandchild and balm to her anguish and pain. The one right thing Sirius would have done in her eyes. Even if it was unknowingly.


End file.
